


White Dandelions

by foundmyhome



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundmyhome/pseuds/foundmyhome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian is what Emma has to live for and Emma is Killian's happy ending.  But sometimes life isn't that nice.  This is a short, angsty, no happy ending one shot about Killian attempting to deal with his life without her in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Dandelions

The air rushed from his lungs. It happened quickly; the air punching out of him so harshly it stung. Or maybe that was his heart— his heart definitely felt like it was stinging, burning, churning inside of his chest. It was bursting, each cavity set on fire and each vein desperately reaching out to the others. His lungs were shriveling and his heart was disintegrating and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would never truly be alive again.

“Please, say something.” Her mother was sitting in the chair in front of him, sobbing. Her shoulders were shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She looked small to him in that moment; with her mascara running down her cheeks and fingers trembling as she rolled her wedding ring, she looked weak.

Killian looked away, Mary Margaret’s shaking frame disgusting him. The nausea that had been rolling in his stomach filled him, the bile climbing his throat. He closed his eyes; his jaw flexed, twitching, and he shoved his clenched fist deep into the pocket of his coat.

His body was thrumming, electricity barely contained underneath the thin, frail skin coating his body. His pulse was heavy, weighing him down, pushing his shoulders and buckling his knees; it sounded loud, as if it was screaming, as if it was the only sound in the entire hospital room.

“Killian, please—” he spun around, the loud crack of his fist against the hospital wall answering for him. When her hiccuped pleadings stopped, he dropped his arm. The drywall was splintered and broken, blood smeared near the hole. It looked right. It looked like how his head felt.

“I don’t understand.” his voice had never been so hoarse; it had never been so sharp. He could never remember a time that Mary Margaret had flinched from him, but when he spat his confusion at the tiled floor, she recoiled, her legs coming up to the chair to cover her body.

Killian was floating. Everything that had tied him to the ground, to the world, to himself, had been snipped away. He tried to focus on her mother’s words, tried to focus on the explanation, but he couldn’t help but be distracted. His teeth were chattering, a loud sound in the otherwise empty waiting room, covering up Mary Margaret’s soft words and shaky breath.

He couldn’t shake the image of a dandelion— the white ones, with the wispy tops that would blow in the gentlest of breezes. He wasn’t sure that he had ever really understood how vulnerable they were before. They were strong weeds, resistance to most of the world’s evils, but still maintained the beauty of the flowers littering the fields they lived in. He remembered the laughter he would hear, the way Emma’s smile seemed to dull the sun’s light before she closed her lips to wish. Then the white wisps were gone and her wish wasn’t spoken aloud and he wished he knew her wish. But those weren’t the rules, she said. Their beauty seemed strong but it was fleeting. To wish is to destroy. Then the white wisps were gone.

Then she was gone.

“Hook,” Henry’s small voice broke through the chattering teeth and angry pulse.

He looked up at her son. For a brief moment, he wondered when he had fallen to his knees. Perhaps the weight of his skin, of his life, of his hurt had finally pressed him down.

He didn’t bother getting up.

Henry looked small then, as if the past years hadn’t happened. As if he was nothing more than a little boy on a bench, fighting with wooden swords and grinning that his mother had been returned to him.

But Henry wasn’t grinning and his mother wasn’t returning and Killian’s throat contrasted, closing.

Water filled the room, coating the world with a blurry wetness that seemed out of place.

“Henry.” His whole body shuddered when he spoke the lad’s name and the water shook with him, falling away from the world and down his cheeks.

Henry collapsed onto the floor, his small body racking with sobs as he curled into himself. His face was red, his hands shaking so terribly he couldn’t push himself off the ground.

“All my fault, all my fault, all my fault,” the small boy chanted, each word punctuated by Mary Margaret’s broken cries.

“All my fault,” Killian disagreed, his trembling mouth barely forming the broken words. He tried to stand, to comfort the lad as he knew she’d want him to, but his legs wouldn’t listen and his arms were made from lead and maybe his heart really had exploded because he could barely feel it anymore.

The door leading to the stairs threw open, a loud bang that none of those waiting in the room bothered responding to.

David ran to Mary Margaret, hesitating when he passed Henry’s rocking body. “Where’s Emma?” He asked softly, his hand squeezing Mary Margaret’s shoulder.

Killian’s head swam, his mouth tasted of iron and pennies, his heart clenched hard, and everything went dark.

 

———

“Get the bloody hell out of my way.” His words were spat out, each letter softened by the drunkenness he’d become accustomed to. His blood had been replaced with rum and even when he tried to cut them out for a drink he couldn’t seem to die. His life was his curse and his drunkenness was the balm, the bandaid pressed thoughtlessly against the gaping wound.

“You can’t keep doing this.” David’s hand against his chest hurt. It was too caring, too firm, too present. And maybe he couldn’t keep chasing the touch of a ghost with another shot but he was going to, anyway. “Your body can’t take it.”

KIllian jerked away, the alcohol sloshing out of the bottle. He took a large swig, swallowing it easily, and jabbing a finger towards David’s face. “That’s the fucking point.”

He turned around, stumbling slightly in his attempt to climb the stairs of the Jolly Roger, but David’s firm grip on his arm spun him back around.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Killian.” David sounded exhausted and Killian, briefly, felt guilty for causing her father to worry about him. “Emma wouldn’t want this.”

Heat flared in Killian’s belly, jerking up through his arms and neck, burning his fingertips and lighting his face on fire. Any guilt burned in the fire and he threw the bottle harshly, the splattering alcohol smashing against the side of his ship.

“Don’t you say her name!” He bellowed, pushing David back. The man bobbed slightly but held his ground. It infuriated Killian. “Not to me.”

The two men breathed heavily, quieting their speech momentarily. David’s body began to shake with the guilt of his actions, of the actions that led to it, and Killian’s began to loosen, his veins buzzing with the alcohol and the agony.

After a moment, David began to plead. “She was my daughter and she loved you!”

Killian’s blood boiled, his heart beating faster than it had for ages. His whole body thrummed alive with rage. “She loves me.”

David deflated, his shoulders crumbling into himself. “Loved,” he choked out the correction.

Killian took a step forward, his trembling hand grabbing David’s desperately. His eyes had trouble focusing and he flickered them across her father’s face. “It can’t be past tense. She—the last thing she—if—“ he roughly dropped David’s hand to rub the back of his hand across his face, wiping the tears away. “If she left loving me, then it’s present tense. She loves me.”

David’s mouth formed various shapes, the words caught in his throat and his shaking body.

Killian turned, digging his hook harshly into the crease of his elbow as he folded his arms. “Present tense.”

———

 

Killian brought his hand to his mouth, the tremors already shaking his unsteady hand as he threw a mint into his mouth.

He hand’t been invited, of course. David tried for years to help him. Mary Margaret began to cry every time she saw his face. The young prince Neal was afraid of him, afraid of the drunken pirate who always stared at his fair complexion a little too long. And Henry—

Henry, of course, hated him fiercely.

He didn’t blame the lad. Truthfully, it would have been hypocritical of him to be upset that her son hated him so much when, he, too, could barely stomach his own existence.

Henry thought he as at fault for his mother’s death and Killian knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was right.

It was his decision making that led to Henry’s mothers and he separating that day; it was his ineffectual, idiotic, damning self that didn’t get to her in time. He had told her to be strong, to not give into the darkness. He had told her not to tarnish her goodness. It was his advice that led to her pausing, led to Cruella getting the upper hand, led to Henry’s mother being thrown off a cliff.

It was Killian’s fault that she had died and the lad finally hating him was merely the lad finally thinking correctly.

“You’re not invited here,” Henry stood in front of his grandmother, his towering frame a full foot above her trembling frame. Already, Mary Margaret’s lips were parted and her eyes were watering.

He hadn’t seen Henry up close for nearly ten years. As far as most of Storybrooke was concerned, he barely existed anymore. They were right.

The lad was tall and handsome, his striking features so reminiscent of his striking parents that he knew he would recognize him even if a hundred years passed.

Killian wasn’t so sure other would recognize him, if not for the painful memories and hateful truths. His body was thinner, his soul weaker. His hair had lost all of its color, the life completely absent from it. It fell below his ears, tucked carefully behind them for this special occasion. His suit hung off his body, his limbs and chest too frail and thin to fill out the only nice thing he owned.

His eyes hadn’t been rimmed in black for years; instead, they were rimmed red from the alcohol, the tears, the exhaustion, the guilt.

For the first time in a very long time, Killian’s gut was swirling with an emotion other than regret. Embarrassment colored his cheeks while nervousness ran through his arms.

Henry’s hand tightened around his wife’s, pulling her behind his other shoulder. She hid her face in her mother in law’s shoulder, only the edge of her white dress peaking out beside Henry’s body.

Killian’s eyes filled and he struggled to blink them away, knowing they were unwanted. “I—” his voice was weaker than he’d ever heard it, desperate for Henry to forgive him, soft from years of lack of use. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “I wanted to—”

“It doesn’t matter,” her son spat at him. “Get the hell out of here, pirate.”

The silence cut at him, each person’s adverted glance or aggressive nod a slice against the tender heart he had haphazardly offered to Henry. His throat was contrasting, his stomach convulsing, his fingers twitching in desperation for a drink.

His legs were quivering, barely capable of holding his weight up. He felt trapped in the spot, like cement had grown over his ankles until he was immobile.

“I’m so very sorry—”

“Save it.” Henry sighed, shaking his head. He looked very old then, and very tired. His expression was full of hate, brimming with pity. “Just leave.”

The rock in his throat made it difficult for Killian to swallow and the numbness in his hands made it difficult to gently lay the card on the counter. 

He left the diner, his heart pausing in his chest and his lungs hesitating between his next breath and all at once his body seemed to question what his heart and mind and been questioning for years: when will it end?

———

His eyes popped open and his ragged breath cut through the night’s silence. The only light in the small cabin streamed in from the small window, moonlight shadowing his bed. An upturned bottle of whiskey laid on his lap, most of his legs and sheets stained with the amber alcohol.

Killian’s chest felt like a fire had been lit under his heart, the organ spasming with rapid flutterings and desperate pleas. His hand clutched frightfully at the skin, nails scraping against his bare chest and lips spreading out for a cry to escape. His stomach rolled and sweat dripped into his eyes and Killian cried.

He wondered, fleetingly, if anyone would find his body afterwards. He wondered if Mary Margaret, now an old and grayed woman, would breathe easier. He wondered if Henry’s son would ever hear about him.

He could feel his lungs struggle to keep up, could feel the desperate need to fight the physical agony but after so many years of looking for a way to truly feel the way his heart was broken, this was the closest he’d ever been.

He grabbed, haphazardly, for the framed picture on his nightstand. Terror was shooting through him, his whole body shaking as he wept.

It was the same photo he always looked at, the one her mother had snapped before their first real date. He had memorized every aspect of it— the softness of her pink dress, the gentle curve of her neck, the light in her eyes, and the pull of her smiling lips. It was the one thing he was given, afterwards. He hadn’t thought to ask and no one had thought to offer. It was only this photo, shoved at him in one of David’s attempts to pull him from the darkness he threw himself into, that he truly treasured.

He ran his finger over the dents of the photo, his hand shaking so terribly that he instead followed jagged, unruly lines across the image. His tears fell onto the image and he wiped them away quickly, ignoring the panic crawling up his throat and through his mind.

He pulled the frame closer to his body, wrapping his arms around it so the photo was hugged tightly his chest. He rolled to his side, curling his knees up high as the pain ricocheted through his chest and skull. The whiskey bottle nudged his hook and his body began to shake as the sobs wracked through him.

His lips spread and his pain blossomed and with her picture clutched tightly to his breaking hurt, he murmured her name. “Emma.”


End file.
